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Oil train safety in Oregon and Washington: 7 questions (and answers)

north dakota train derailment

A fireball goes up at the site of an oil train derailment Dec. 30, 2013, in Casselton, N.D. It was the third high-profile oil train accident of the year. Oil trains like it are passing through Oregon and Washington. More trains could be coming.
(AP Photo/Bruce Crummy)

Since July, three high-profile accidents in Canada and the United States have focused attention on the growth of trains being used to transport crude oil.

Each accident, including one that killed 47 people, looked terrifying. Burning crude fueled mushroom clouds of searing flame and black smoke in Quebec, Alabama and North Dakota.

It’s an issue that hits home. Oil trains already run through Portland. And more are likely to pass through the Columbia River Gorge if a Vancouver, Wash., shipping terminal is built.

With an increasing focus on oil train safety, we wanted to answer some basic questions about what’s proposed, what’s gone wrong and what it means here.

1. What exactly is an oil train?

It’s a train pulling dozens of tank cars filled with crude oil.

They’re as long as a mile-and-a-half. And they carry a lot of oil. One train can transport enough oil to make more than a million gallons of gasoline. That’s enough to fill up your car each week – for the next 1,400 years.

They’ve been riding the rails in Oregon since late 2012.

2. Why are oil trains in Oregon?

A huge oil boom is happening right now on the Northern Plains (actually under it). It’s recently become cheaper to extract oil trapped in rock formations beneath the earth. And North Dakota has a lot.

Historically, crude oil has been transported to refineries in the United States on massive tanker ships or through pipelines.

But tankers don’t work in landlocked North Dakota. And the region’s pipelines don’t have capacity for all the new oil being extracted there.

Enter trains. Think of them as pipelines on wheels. They’re moving oil to refineries in unprecedented volume across the United States – including through Washington and Oregon.

This is new, a direct result of the North Dakota boom.

Back in 2008, just 9,500 carloads of oil rode the rails. But by 2013, the rail industry estimated that 400,000 carloads were shipped by rail.

That major expansion has come with deadly problems that have exposed flaws in shipping practices. But we’ll get to those later.

3. How much oil is coming on trains now?

Up to 600,000 barrels of oil each month are shipped out of Port Westward on the Columbia River near Clatskanie. That comes through Portland via rail from North Dakota. Trains started arriving in late 2012.

That project, which has expansion hopes, is small compared to other terminals planned in Washington. The largest is in Vancouver, Wash., across the Columbia River from Portland. Two businesses, Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos., are proposing a project there that would sharply increase oil trains through the region.

The proposal is big. The terminal could handle as much oil in two days as the Port Westward facility processes each month.

As many as four oil trains a day could bring it to Vancouver through the Columbia River Gorge, depending on where the crude came from.

4. Is it safe to carry oil on a train?

Most of the time.

But three accidents in the last year have raised serious questions about oil train safety.

The railroad industry commonly cites the same statistic: 99.9977 percent of the time, hazardous materials such as oil make it safely to their destinations.

That little .0023 percent margin of error has proved deadly.

The worst incident happened July 6 in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, about 150 miles east of Montreal near the Maine border.

A train carrying North Dakota crude derailed and exploded in the center of the tourist town, killing 47 people. This amateur video shows just how cataclysmic the inferno was.

Another oil train accident happened Nov. 8 in western Alabama. No injuries were reported, but the fire burned for days. A third incident happened Dec. 30 in eastern North Dakota. An oil train derailed near Casselton, N.D., and exploded in a spectacular fireball. No one was hurt.

5. Can that happen here?

It already has.

The accident in Oregon involved ethanol, another type of flammable fuel transported in the same type of rail cars as crude oil.

It was May 2011. A train carrying logs near Scappoose derailed and struck another train carrying ethanol. Some 28,000 gallons of ethanol spilled and caught fire.

The flames were so strong, firefighters evacuated businesses and residents within a half-mile. It took hours to extinguish the blaze.

The accident is the only major rail fire in Oregon involving hazardous materials like oil since North Dakota crude began being transported by rail.

6. Why are oil trains catching fire?

Just a few months ago, crude oil wasn’t thought to be especially flammable.

The Quebec, North Dakota and Alabama accidents have changed that view. The U.S. Department of Transportation warned Thursday that the oil being shipped from North Dakota may be more flammable than traditional crude. While oil extracted from Canada’s tar sands is heavy and thick, the North Dakota oil is lighter. The government warned it may be prone to ignite at lower temperatures than previously thought.

View full sizeSmoke rises from railway cars that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec on July 6, 2013. The accident killed 47 people and focused attention on the growth of trains hauling crude oil from North Dakota.AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Paul Chiasson

There’s another problem: The type of railcars transporting the crude. They’re a model called the DOT-111 – they look like black soda cans on wheels. The National Transportation Safety Board first identified them as safety risks in 1991, saying their shells are thin and prone to puncture in accidents.

Though industry standards were tightened in 2011, the majority of tank cars used today still don’t meet them. The NTSB warns that safety risks exist as long as old rail cars are intermingled with newer models.

7. Would railcars going to the Vancouver, Wash. terminal be old or new models? What about those coming through Portland now?

It’s not clear what models are passing through Portland now. The plant manager at the terminal near Clatskanie, the Columbia Pacific Bio-Refinery, didn’t return repeated phone calls.

As for Vancouver, it’s not settled yet.

Tesoro, one of the project developers, says it will use modern rail cars to bring in crude, which it plans to ship and refine elsewhere. But it won’t be the only customer using the terminal.

The Tesoro-Savage joint venture hopes to contract with other companies that want to ship crude to other West Coast refineries. Those contracts haven’t been signed, so no commitments have been made on the type of railcar to be used.

“Since we’re not the shipper of the crude, we don’t control that,” Kelly Flint, an attorney representing Savage, told The Oregonian. “That’s up to the railroad and the government to decide what crude oil can be safely shipped in.”

Ultimately, it’s the federal government’s responsibility to regulate rail safety. And the three oil train accidents are pressuring it to do more.

If you have a question about oil trains, please e-mail it to me at rdavis@oregonian.com or leave a comment below.